With households collectively throwing away 7 million tons of food every year, that’s hundreds of pounds of wasted food for all of us. Most people wouldn’t be very happy if they lost £10 in the street, but we seem to be oblivious to emptying the fridge into a bin liner on a weekly basis!
Confused about what changes to make? Fear not, take your head out of the saucepan because we’ve put together some useful info that could not only save you a significant amount of money over the year, but you’ll be doing your bit to help stem the flow of waste food that ends up as landfill – did you know that 20% of all landfill is food-based?
Planning
Keep track of what you buy. A magnetic and wipeable board on your fridge is great for jotting down what you need to buy as you use it up, and also for meal ideas for the week ahead. Checking your cupboards before shopping will ensure you don’t buy something you already have!
Handy hints: Try to keep your fridge between 1-5 degrees – some foods will go off much more quickly at higher temperatures (milk, we’re looking at you!). Some foods – and this is a highly contentious subject! – keep better outside of the fridge, e.g. bread (somewhere cool and dark), bananas (away from other fruits, try hanging them up), pineapples, potatoes, onions etc.
Check your dates
Close that Tinder app, we mean use-by dates! These are the dates to take notice of when you’re doing your weekly shop – only buy what you can use before it expires.
Handy hints: A best-before date is just that, it’ll be at its best before the date on the packaging. It doesn’t mean you have to chuck it in the bin immediately. Use your common sense when it comes to these items – if it looks and feels usable, it most probably is. Stale bread makes excellent toast and breadcrumbs, and wilted or soft vegetables can still be used in soups and stocks etc.
Organise your cupboards
Inexplicable tin of mulligatawny soup from 1996? If you haven’t seen the back of your cupboards in a long time, it could be a good idea to have a tidy up – tidy cupboards, tidy mind? – and regain some storage space.
Handy hints: Restaurants and shops use the ‘first in, first out’ (or FIFO) method for stocking their food storage areas or retail shelves to reduce waste, and it’s a practical way of organising shelves in the home too. Putting your newly bought foods at the back of the fridge or cupboards encourages use of the food at the front first, helping to ensure freshness and hopefully reducing waste.
Show your freezer some love
The unsung hero of the kitchen! Instead of being a place where old food goes to die – what on earth is in that unlabelled bag at the back? – or simply used as storage for ready-meals, your freezer can be an incredible tool for reducing your waste food.
Handy hints: Freeze your 5-a-day if you’re not going to use them in time – some fruits and vegetables can lose their texture when frozen, so for things like strawberries, apples or tomatoes, puree or stew before freezing. Perfect for making that apple crumble next month! Freezing leftovers is also a great way of ticking off a meal for the next week. You could also – and our Environmental Manager swears by this! – save money by batch cooking and freezing individual portions.
Home composting
Recycle your waste foods. Obviously, nobody is going to be able to reduce their waste to zero (if you have, we salute you!), so a home composter is a great way of diverting much of your – hopefully now reduced – food waste from your general waste bin, with the benefit of creating some great compost for your flowers or veg plot, with minimal effort.
Handy hints: We’ve put together a simple guide to help you get started with home composting, what you should and shouldn’t put in your composter and how to make sure your compost process is a success. You can read it here.
The average household doesn’t create serious problems for our environment, but it’s crucial that we all take steps to reduce our impact on the planet.
By finding ways to reduce our food waste, we’re making significant steps towards a healthier, cheaper, and less wasteful future.
If you’re a business looking to reduce your food waste, we can definitely help with that too, learn more here.
